The photography in The Seal Garden is stunning. I love it when books use photographs of familiar creatures to introduce us to very specific places. This book covers "the seal garden," a special area of underwater vegetation in the Great Bear Sea off the coast of British Columbia, where seals and other animals can go to be safe from storms and predators.

There are some really lovely shots here, of seals swimming around under and above the water. My favorites were the pictures of shafts of light spreading through the water and plants. You get the feeling that this book was created by people who genuinely know and love the area, and is not just another "general nature information" project.

The text focuses on describing some of the animals that live in this environment and some of the things they may experience on a daily basis -- sheltering from a storm or a group of hunting orcas, eating fish, lounging on rocks, etc.

My only complaint is that I didn't see that the book ever actually tells us where the Great Bear Sea is, other than mentioning the Pacific Ocean. Since I'm not from the Pacific Northwest, the name was unfamiliar to me, so it's unfortunate that I had to resort to Google to figure out exactly where this place is located -- even a simple map would have been very helpful.

(Thanks to NetGalley for the review copy.)

Scrounged From: NetGalley

Format: Kindle
Author: Nicholas Read
Photographer: Ian McAllister
Pages: 32
Content Advisory: None

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